Karjam and I Spend a lot of Time in the Studio

June 19^th, 2011

After working on my conference paper for several hours I headed to the 국악원 Gugakwon to meet up with 최해리 Choi Haeri, a dance researcher that professor 조경만 had introduced me to. The conversation was very fruitful and rewarding. Both because Haeri is really knowledgeable and intelligent and gave me great new information and shook loose some ideas that have been percolating in my skull, and also because I think we could become friends, certainly she's quick thinking, critical and intelligent, just the way I like my friends.

During our conversation even there was a constant stream of other people coming through because a performance was beginning at 5. I had tickets, as it was 진옥섭 Jin Okseop's big deal annual performance, and there were a lot of people I knew there, including 엄승용, 고석진, 손병만, 이병옥, 이수환 and many many more. After the bell had already started ringing to tell everyone to go in and find their seats Karjam finally arrived. I need to start telling him things start 30 minutes before they actually do. It really stresses me out when he's late.

The 30,000 won seats had been sold out when I got around to buying tickets (the entire show sold out!), and I decided 40 or 50,000 per seat was too much for me to justify, so we were in the 20,000 won seats on the third floor. Karjam was frustrated that he couldn’t see well enough. That's true, we couldn't. The show was interesting. I studiously recorded all of Jin Okseop's emceeing for later analysis. I need to go visit him and take a photo of him. His name will definitely be sprinkled throughout my dissertation. After the show a friend of Haeri's introduced me to one of the performers, but it wasn't the performer who had wowed me… not quite sure why Haeri thought I should meet her. Mid show 장사익 Jang Sa'ik had come up on stage and sung two songs. Karjam was even more blown away live than when we listen to Jang's music at home, so he insisted that I introduce him to Jang afterwards. Mind you, I've met Jang before and I'm a total fan, but that doesn't mean Jang knows me. Whatever, I'm ballsy enough to walk up to the most famous person in the lobby and say "my husband, a Tibetan singer, really wants to meet you." They took a photo together, exchanged cards and Jang invited Karjam to stop by for tea and Chinese noodles. Hmmm…. Should we really?

June 20^th, 2011

During the day Karjam and I hung out with 영훈 Yeonghun at the studio as he mixed some of Karjam's songs. Then I went to 봉산탈춤 Bongsan Talchum. Class was interesting. We had two new students, both students majoring in 연극 drama, both at Bongsan Talchum because they strategically believed that learning a Korean way of moving (what the man said) and more about traditional theatre (what both said) would be useful for them in their future. Also this graduate student, 김현철 came back. He was in class in August and September, but was back now after the school year ended. He majored in 국악 Korean music for his undergrad and is now majoring in Music Education. I like him, but he looks like he's in high school. Speaking of, 현석's friend 동호,  attended his second class. And 미행 Mihaeng is back. She gave me some nice handmade soap. She's so negative I really wish she wasn't back, but she likes me, so… I'm torn. Oh and 윤희 Yunhee, the dancer, came back. It was a lively day. We practiced 7 monks and did 할미 Halmi (grandmother) only.

June 21^st, 2011 Summer Solstice

We had recording again today, with Hilary Finchum-Sung coming in the morning to record a violin track for "A Song for Tsemphel" (this title might change). The song is so sad, because Karjam's friend is serving a 15 year prison sentence for political reasons and Karjam misses him so much (and worries about Tsemphel's family). The song had already been quite good, but it didn't feel as sad as the lyrics. With the addition of Hilary's violin track the song really came alive. When we listened to the song after she was done both Karjam and I cried.

We had lunch with Hilary and then it was time to meet 김유나Kim Yuna. Originally we were going to have a special student of Hilary's Bitna do the 아쟁 ajaeng, but her grandmother got seriously sick, so Bitna introduced another ajaeng player. I've been emailing with Yuna but this was the first meeting. She was so cute in her black high heels, ruffled white blouse and black skirt. Her hair even was quite stylish. She had taken my injunction to be ready for the camera quite seriously. She needed more of Yeonghun's explanation than any other of the musicians so far, as it was her first time in the studio, but her expression of nervous delight to be putting on the headphones for the first time was just delightfully cute. Karjam and I stayed at the studio integrating Samkuchet's singing into the two songs (she sent files from Gannan) until nearly 8 pm.

Jin Okseop Lecture on Korean Dance (#2)

April 3^rd, 2011

I worked on the computer all day, for a few hours at Chans Bros, the rest of the day at home.

April 4^th, 2011

Stopped by Yonsei campus and printed chapter 2 of my dissertation so I can look at it on paper for once. It's about 90 pages long, in three separate files right now. I hope I can clarify and edit it well enough to share soon. I was in the neighborhood so that I could meet my friend 회정 Hoijung to help her with a presentation she doesn't actually need my help with, but perhaps prep goes faster with my company!

After the meeting with Hoijung I decided I didn't have enough time to hurry home and then hurry to KOUS so I went directly there and talked with one of the workers there to get some background info on their operations before I talk to 진옥섭 Jin Okseop directly. Today class was much better because I had a small epiphany, talking with 세정 Sejeong helped me to develop another idea I've been thinking through and because Jin Okseop made a point that is really important. In fact Jin only talked for about fifteen minutes then showed a video that was at least an hour long.

1) Jin's important point: In Korean dance in the past, like the dance that was most commonly trained in the art's academies for 기생 gisaeng called 권범 gwonbeom, it was common to see fairly large groups of artists put on stage at once, after they'd trained together extensively and could match movements to each other well. But in the modern era when it's so hard to get a group of people together, or get them together often enough to dance as one, these types of dances rapidly lost members and were adjusted to become solo dances. In addition the solo dances became more popular and commonly performed.

2) Talking with Sejeong: it is common to see really old dancers put on stage. In the video we saw a woman with osteoporosis so bad that she had a huge hump in her back. We also saw people who were shaking as they danced and a guy who's balance had in large part deserted him. But Sejeong confirmed that we don't see musicians of similar age on stage. I asked her why not since obviously with an instrument like 가야금 gayageum or 해금 haegeum there shouldn't be much physical limitation on it. She said that the audience forgives the old dancers for shaking but they can't tell the age of the old musicians or tell if they are shaking when their tone is affected, so the musicians won't do go on stage once their performance is compromised.

3) My own small epiphany relates to the ongoing analysis of the age of dancers on the Korean stage and it may actually be something I've figured out before, I was just figuring it out again in more depth and scribbling in the dark. In brief: in addition to the other many reasons to watch an old dancer or for an old dancer to go on stage, there is the desire of the audience for the authentic –folk- dance, for the person trained in the village who is the embodied connection with a near mythical past that they've mostly lost in the modern age, and that watching that person who physically holds the 'old' knowledge and 'old' ways may be more rewarding (emotionally) than watching the young and beautiful dancer who after 5 or 10 years of practice should –theoretically- be able to do what the old dancer can do. 

Comments welcome, of course.

And, super cool thing, 장사익 Jang Sa'ik (one of my favorite singers) was sitting directly behind me in class today. I gave him a bow big enough to acknowledge him but not intrusive enough that he'd have to engage me in conversation. At first (since his knees literally were 3 inches behind my seat) I was a bit distracted that he was there, but having 안대천 Ahn Daecheon on one side of me and Sejeong on the other, I got over it. 

Fusion (and Chuseok)

September 22nd, 2010 추석 Chuseok, the Korean Autumn Harvest Holiday

Well, as foreigners without a particularly close family in town we didn’t do anything particularly for the holiday, however we did venture out for several hours of observation of various performances and events. There were far fewer than the internet led me to expect and each place I’d looked up in advance had less going on, presumably in all cases because yesterday’s rain had caused plans to change, but it was still a very happening day outside, lots of small events and concert stages. None of the places we went to, ironically, had the traditional events I wanted to see, partially because I saved the best event (being held two days in a row) for tomorrow. We started at City Hall, spent quite some time in 덕수궁 Deoksu Palace, then proceeded to 천계천 Cheongyae Stream, hit a bit of 대학로 Daehangno, then looped around and came back to 세종문화회관 Sejong Culture and Art Center which was hosting a performance by Sukmyeong Gayageum Ensemble. That meant that not most but ALL the performances we’d hit during the day fully qualified as fusion.

Photos:
The funniest menu item I've seen in a long time and the view down the stream.



Photos of Deoksu Palace and Karjam. The one B/W should teach him to stop goofing around when I want to take a photo of him!






Photo of one of the Sukmyeong performers.


I am torn on the subject of fusion. The other day when I went to Prof. Hilary Finchum-Sung’s class one of the cool things she said was that the violin had developed over centuries to be ideally suited to playing Western classical music, like Mozart, and that likewise the Korean instruments, regardless of roots in China (in most cases) had evolved to fit the ideal Korean aesthetic. So when you try to play “Moonriver” on the 해금 haegeum it’s sort of laughable at best. I call that sort of thing a gimmick. It’s the same with photography, people will develop a very unusual process that creates an unexpected result and then go with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good photo. It’s unexpected to hear the Beatles on 가야금 gayageum, but that doesn’t mean that it really sounds good. Honestly it sounds like muzack. Elevator music. Maybe you’d want to listen to the end the first time, but after that would you want to hear it again, really? The Beatles being one of the main sources of the Sukmyeong group’s adaptations (they play very few Korean traditional pieces and even when they do, since they all use 25nylon string (modernized from the classical 12 silk string) gayageum, it still won’t sound fully traditional. In other words I find Western music played on Korean instruments at least a waste of talent, and often just annoying. However some groups that combine Western and Korean instruments and play pieces of music that are a bit between the two traditions can produce exciting results that may cause people to reconnect with traditions/traditional music/ traditional instruments and can give young performers a chance to be creative and find excitement in a musical genre bound by tradition and chock-full of canonical pieces which though often (산조 sanjo) originally as welcoming to improvisation as jazz are in practice increasingly rigid. During the day Karjam and I heard both interesting fusion and not interesting fusion.

One of my favorite performers is 장사익 Jang Sa’ik. The man has an amazing voice. (Or should I say had? He can’t sing with the power he could when I was first seeing him live.) Jang is traditionally trained and fully proficient in traditional music, and has chosen to create fusion ensembles to accompany adapted traditional, traditional and newly-composed songs. I can't complain about his fusion, he's just a master, and if it keeps him artistically engaged I'm all for it. But there are a lot of performers who don't master the traditional arts before they start messing around with fusion and I think that that is often off key (bad musical pun, sorry). [Another Jang Sa'ik fusion performance].

김덕수 Kim Deoksu, one of the most famous drummers in Korea, has had long-standing fusion relationships, including with the Jazz group Red Sun. It's funny to look back on it now, but the first Korean music CD I ever owned was Kim Deoksu Samulnori with Red Sun (actually it was given to my ex, but by my 합기도 Hapkido instructor, way back in 1996).

Fusion has been embraced by the government as the perfect ingredient in tourism ad campaigns, just look at this one for an example.

These days there are a lot of co-productions with B-boys (in case you didn't know, Korean B-boys win many international competitions, and Korea's becoming quite the hot location for B-boy and B-girl activities). [example 1] [example 2]

Some Koreanists have written on fusion music, including R Anderson Sutton who wrote a whole article on how the Haegeum is being utilized for a lot of fusion these days, whereas in the past the gayageum was more favored. I love Haegeum, but sometimes people try to repress its natural rasp when they play it in fusion, which to me begs the question "why use haegeum if you don't want it to sound like a haegeum?" [Haegeum fusion example 1][we heard a lot of music in this vein today][a third example][more haegeum fusion]

There are also a lot of younger traditional musicians who try to adapt K-pop hits for their instrument, I don’t know if this is being performed anywhere seriously, but so much of this is running around Youtube, I should acknowledge it. So are they screwing up by not concentrating on polishing the ‘real’ skills of their instrument or are they keeping themselves engaged and finding artistic inspiration? I really can’t judge this, but I need to follow up on this subject during my fieldwork. And I’d really like comments on this subject! [Go halfway through the video to hear the pop with the gayageum